A Land More Kind Than Home (8 page)

W
HEN
I
DIPPED MY HAND INTO THE RIVER, THE WATER
was so cold that it almost took my breath away. I let my wrist go limp, and I swished it back and forth like a brook trout flicks its tail in shallow, rocky water, and I watched the blood leave my hand and move into the river like red smoke drifting up from a fire. I took my other hand and cupped water into it and splashed it over my face to keep my eyes from getting too red and swollen from all the crying. I didn't want Miss Lyle or Mama or nobody else up at the church to know I'd been crying because I didn't want them asking me nothing about what we'd been doing.

Joe Bill sat by the water on top of a rock a little piece down the bank with his arms locked around his knees. He looked out at the river. Neither one of us had said a word since we came out of the woods and snuck back down to the riverbank. I stared at his back for a minute, and then I stood up and shook the water off my hands.

“You know we can't tell nobody about this,” I said to him. “We shouldn't have seen that. We weren't supposed to see anything.”

“I know,” Joe Bill said.

I thought about what I was saying, and then I pictured those men lying down on top of Stump, and in my head I heard myself holler out for Mama. I stood up and turned away from Joe Bill before I started crying again, and I untucked my shirttail and wiped my eyes with it. I tried to keep my right hand from touching my shirt any more than it already had so I wouldn't get more blood on it.

“We never should've gone up there,” I said. I looked back at Joe Bill. He turned his face toward me, and he looked like he might start crying again too.

“I think they were trying to help him,” he said. “Mr. Thompson told us it was Stump's special day. Maybe they were trying to heal him. Maybe they were laying their hands on him so he could talk.”

“He couldn't breathe!” I screamed at him. “He was trying to get up and run because he couldn't breathe, and they wouldn't get off him! They might have been trying to kill him!”

“They weren't,” Joe Bill said.

“How do you know?” I hollered. At that second I thought about telling Joe Bill about what else I'd seen: Pastor Chambliss with no shirt on, standing over the rain barrel and staring down at Stump. But then I thought about how Joe Bill hadn't ever kept a secret in his whole life, and I was already worried about what he was going to tell people about what we'd just seen happen inside the church.

I got down on my knees again and dipped my hand into the water. The splinter had gotten a little softer once I'd gotten it wet, but it still hurt too bad for me to close my fingers and make a fist to hide it from Mama. I cleaned the blood off my hand and splashed more water on my face. Farther down the river, I heard Miss Lyle hollering for all the kids to quit playing and head up the path to the road, and I knew church had let out and it was time to go home. We sat there and listened to her calling for us.

“I reckon we should go,” Joe Bill said.

“You can't say nothing, Joe Bill,” I said. “You can't say nothing to nobody. I mean it.”

“I won't,” he promised.

He turned and ran down the riverbank to where Miss Lyle and the rest of the kids were. I thought about running after him, but then I looked down at my hand and I felt it throb every time my heart beat. I figured I'd better just walk instead.

B
Y THE TIME
I
GOT BACK DOWN TO WHERE WE
'
D HAD
S
UNDAY
school, Miss Lyle had taken the rest of the kids back up the path and across the road to the church parking lot. I walked up the path and stopped at the top and looked across the road. The parking lot was full of people. Heat waves came up off the asphalt and it looked like a mirage, like everybody over there was at the bottom of a swimming pool and I was standing on the edge looking down at them. I thought about what a mirage must look like in the desert after you've gotten yourself lost and you ain't had nothing to drink and are just about ready to die. I reckon at that point your mind can trick you into seeing just about anything it wants you to see.

Some men stood with their hands in their pockets and talked to each other out by the road. A couple of them had that Brylcreem combed into their hair, and they smoked cigarettes and stood back and watched the rest of the people in the parking lot. I looked around, and it didn't take me no time at all to find Mama and Stump because they had a whole crowd of people standing around them. They were all talking loud and laughing, and some of the women hugged Mama and a few people bent down and talked to Stump like they expected him to say something back to them. When he didn't even look at them, they just smiled and stood back and stared down at him and talked to Mama some more without taking their eyes off him. Mama smiled like she loved hearing what they had to say. Stump looked toward me where I was standing across the road, and even though I knew he was probably looking out at the river behind me, I felt like he was staring me right in the eyes.

I looked up and down the road, and then I went ahead and crossed to the other side and walked into the parking lot. The heat waves shook in front of me like a flame coming up out of a cigarette lighter, and for a minute it looked like every one of them people in the parking lot was on fire. The men smoking out by the road saw me coming, and they finished their cigarettes and dropped them on the pavement and put them out with the toes of their boots. They stared at me when I walked past. I knew they were looking at the blood on my shirt, probably wondering what in the world had happened during Sunday school that could've gotten me so hurt. I acted like I didn't see them, and I kept walking toward Mama. A few of the women standing with her saw me coming, and they tapped her on the shoulder and pointed at me. She turned around, and when she saw me she put her hands on her hips and waited until I got close enough for her not to have to raise her voice.

“What happened?” she asked, but before I could even answer, Pastor Chambliss walked over through the crowd and stopped right in front of us. He looked down at me, and then he reached out with those smooth, pink fingers and lifted up my hand to get a good look at it. He held it there like he wasn't going to let it go.

“Well, look here,” he said. “The good Lord can heal with one hand and harm with the other.” He smiled. “That's the power of an awesome God.”

One of those women standing by us said, “Amen.”

I tried to pull my hand away, but he held it tight and I couldn't get it free. He looked over at Stump and reached out to touch him too, but Stump moved closer to Mama like he was trying to get away from him. Pastor Chambliss smiled.

“Y'all coming back for the evening service?” he asked Mama.

“I reckon we can,” she said.

“You should,” he said. He let go of my hand and nodded toward Stump. “And bring this one with you. The Lord ain't finished with him yet.”

“N
OW, TELL ME AGAIN
,” M
AMA SAID
. S
HE BACKED
D
ADDY
'
S TRUCK
out of the parking space and pulled out onto the road. The truck shook just a little bit when she put her foot on the gas pedal to get us going. Stump sat in between us and stared straight ahead like we weren't even sitting there in the truck with him. I kept the hand with that splinter in it propped up on my knee so nothing would hit it. It had already started to turn red, but at least it wasn't bleeding anymore.

“What do you want me to tell you?” I asked her. It was hot inside the truck, and Mama rolled her window down and the air came in and blew some crumpled-up papers around on the dashboard. I thought about rolling my window down too, but I didn't want all that wind in my face.

“I want you to tell me again about how you got that big old splinter,” she said. “I want you to tell me one more time how you done it.”

I looked in the side mirror just before we went around the curve up toward the highway. I could see the church in the mirror behind us, and there was still a bunch of people standing around outside in the parking lot. I saw Mr. Gene Thompson talking to some folks out by the road, and I swear I saw him turn his head like he was watching us drive off toward the highway.

“Me and Joe Bill were skipping rocks after Sunday school,” I said. “Right after Mr. Thompson came and got Stump. I found an old board and was hitting rocks like baseballs. Joe Bill was pitching. I wasn't holding it tight enough, and it slipped a little in my hand and that's how I got it.”

Mama looked at my hand, and then she looked back at the road. I heard her sigh.

“That board must've been awfully dry and rotten for it to have given you that kind of splinter.”

“It was,” I said. She was quiet for a second and I tried to close my fingers again, but the blood had started to scab up and get real stiff and it was even harder to make a fist than it was before.

“Jess,” Mama said.

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“If I call Joe Bill's mama and ask her to talk to him about it, you think he's going to tell her the same story about that bat?”

“It wasn't a bat,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” Mama said. “Is Joe Bill going to remember it just like you told it to me?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said, but I knew he wouldn't tell it like that because he didn't know nothing about what I'd told her. I knew that if I told the truth about how I'd gotten that splinter then I'd have to tell the truth about what I saw them doing to Stump, and then I might've found myself telling her about how the rain barrel got broken and about how pink and wrinkled Pastor Chambliss's body looked when he came around the corner of the house with no shirt on. I sat there and looked out the window and thought about that, and it made my neck feel hot and I could feel my heart beating hard and I felt the blood pumping in my hand like my heart was jammed up under that splinter. I wished I could go back and stop myself from seeing all the things that I'd seen in the past two days, but I knew there wasn't no way that I could undo any of that now, no matter how bad I wanted to.

Mama put on the brakes at the stop sign at the top of the hill, and then she gave it some gas and we turned left onto the highway and headed toward home. Once we got going faster, the wind blew into the window even stronger and it flipped open the pages of her Bible where she'd sat it up on the dash. I looked at those pages while the wind turned them, and I saw that just about every page had Mama's handwriting on it. She rolled her window up and then she reached out and closed her Bible and squeezed it down into the seat between her and Stump.

“Jess,” she said again.

“Yes, ma'am?”

“There's something I need to talk to you about.” I turned and looked out my window again because I didn't want to look at her when I already knew what she was going to say. I knew she was going to ask me about Mr. Gene Thompson telling her that he saw me and Joe Bill spying on them in the church, and then she was going to ask me why I lied about how I got that splinter. I tried to think about whether or not I should just go ahead and tell her about it all so I wouldn't have to worry about it no more, just so I knew for sure that I'd finally done the right thing. I figured Joe Bill was in the car with his mom and dad on the way home from church right then, and he was probably telling them all about us seeing Stump inside the church anyway, and his mama had probably already called over to the house and talked to Daddy and he was going to be waiting for us on the porch when we pulled up in front of the house. If Joe Bill didn't tell his mom and dad, then he'd tell Scooter for sure, and who knew what would happen after he did that.

I put my good hand on the dash and leaned forward in the seat so I could look past Stump and see Mama. I wanted to think of exactly what I should tell her about what all I'd seen, but when I looked at her I saw that she wasn't even mad. She smiled like she was happy even though she had tears in her eyes.

“We had us a healing in church today,” she said. She looked over at me, and I watched two big tears run down her cheeks, and then she wiped her face and looked back at the road. I leaned back in my seat and felt light-headed because my heart had been beating so fast just the second before and now it felt like it had stopped cold.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“We had us a healing,” she said again. She wiped a tear from her cheek. “This morning, during the service, Pastor Chambliss invited the deacons down front and they all laid their hands on Christopher and prayed for his healing.” I heard her reach out and pat Stump's leg, and I looked over and saw her give it a little squeeze. “I tell you what,” she said. “God answers prayer. We've had us a miracle.” I thought about what Joe Bill had said about them trying to heal Stump by laying on him and putting their hands on him, and then I thought about how Stump had tried to stand up and run away while they were doing it and how much watching it all happen had made Mama cry.

“How do you know there was a miracle?” I asked her.

“Because he spoke,” she said. “He said the only word he's ever said, and he said it this morning in church with the deacons laying their hands on him and praying for our family.”